“…preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths.” 2 Timothy 4:2-3
History definitely repeats itself over and over as man refuses to learn from past mistakes. Since the time of Christ mankind has tried to find a way around the tough issues Jesus addressed because He calls us to do some pretty hard things.
Years ago Oprah Winfrey was touting a book by Eckhart Tolle called “A New Earth,” which is another deceptive attempt at presenting a form of spirituality that combines Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Sufism, and a sprinkling of Christianity. It is easily marketed because as one reviewer stated, “it is an eclectic mix of conventional and unconventional wisdom, and Western and Eastern beliefs, presented in a tolerant, non-threatening, and non-sectarian way. In other words, it’s “Religion Light,” in which one can be spiritual with “little down and no credit,” and we have seen where that type of thinking got the mortgage industry. The terrifying thing is that the outcome of this has more than temporal ramifications.
How long will we be deceived into thinking that quick fix schemes designed to get us to feel better for the moment really work? We want our spiritual problems solved in the same way we want our weight problems solved. We want an easy pill to take that makes us lose weight and be healthy without the disciplines of any lifestyle changes. Society is fixated with easy roads, while history reveals that the most valuable lessons in life come forth through that which is a challenge and proves to be difficult.
C. S. Lewis the great Oxford scholar who once was an avid atheist wrote:
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a good moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great moral teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Here we go again: Are we going to turn to what’s easy, what’s new, what’s popular, or some celebrity to find solutions to problems addressed by Jesus through His words and life? He said “I am the way, the truth and the life.” He demonstrated His authority and power by more than words, but supernatural signs and wonders the most obvious being His resurrection. It is His resurrection He said would be the sign that would set Him apart from all who would seek to get a following. How can we look toward the Almighty with an arrogance that says we will believe in Him on our terms?
Dear ones, please be careful about partaking of things that look and even initially taste good.
